Morning came without light. It arrived as a cold tug at my shoulder and the sharp clack of cuffs closing around my wrists, the sound threaded into my pulse before I was fully awake. The cell door opened, and two officers guided me through the corridors as if moving a piece of evidence rather than a person.
The air in the station tasted stale, the kind that lingered from the night before—coffee left too long on a warmer, breath dried on recycled air. My hands were pinned in front of me, wrists linked by steel that never warmed, no matter how tightly I curled my fingers.
They led me outside, into the back of a transport van. The bench vibrated against my spine as the engine started. The grate threw a shadow across my knees like a barcode that already knew the price. Through the small grated window, I could see the city passing—blurred streaks of buildings I once walked through freely. Now they felt like memories from a life I had abandoned rather than lived.
Every turn tightened something inside my chest.
When the van finally slowed, I braced myself. The doors opened, and daylight spilled in—not warm, not comforting, just sharp enough to make me squint. The officers guided me down a short flight of steps into the side entrance of the Ebonreach District Court. The stone façade loomed overhead, tall and unwavering, as if carved for the specific purpose of reminding mortals they had never been powerful.
Inside, the building smelled of old paper and cold marble. Conversations murmured from the hallways—voices too busy, too disinterested, too tired to care what a man coming in chains might be thinking. The cuffs dug into my skin as they escorted me through a narrow corridor toward the hearing room.
When the door opened, a wave of stillness met me. The space felt carved out of silence. Polished wood, high windows, the low echo of footsteps absorbed by carpet designed specifically to deaden sound. A few people were seated along the benches—faces blurred by fear, curiosity, boredom. I couldn't tell which emotion belonged to whom.
I saw Logan standing near the defense table.
His suit looked more rumpled than the day before, the circles under his eyes darker, but he straightened when he saw me. He didn't smile, didn't nod, didn't offer anything performative. He just held my gaze until the officer beside me opened the gate to the defendant's area.
For a moment, the sound of the cuffs brushing the wooden railing felt louder than the entire room.
I took my place beside him. Logan leaned slightly closer, his voice low enough that no one else could hear. "Stay quiet unless the judge speaks to you. I'm here. If they ask for a plea today, I'll enter not guilty," he added, voice low. "You say nothing."
That last part hit harder than anything else had in days.
The judge entered then—an older man with a presence that carried both exhaustion and authority. His robe swayed as he settled behind the bench, adjusting his glasses before glancing down at a stack of documents.
The clerk called my name, my new last name first, as though Hollands had been scraped off me like a stain.
I stood.
The judge opened the file and read aloud, each word falling with deliberate weight.
"Arson," he said, eyes scanning the page. "Manslaughter. Attempted murder." He paused, turning a sheet. "And one count of conspiracy with forbidden entities, as defined under the Sovereign Integrity Act."
My heart lurched. Forbidden entities. That was Corvian. They had written him into law.
I stared at the judge, unable to keep my breath from thinning.
He looked up at me over the rim of his glasses. "Do you understand the charges, Mr. Hollands?" The robe softened nothing; the question still had edges.
My mouth felt too dry. The words clung to my tongue like they didn't want to leave, but I forced them out anyway. "Yes," I said. It came out rough. Barely steady. "I understand."
"Do you have representation," he asked, "or are you requesting court-appointed counsel?"
Logan stepped forward before I could move. "Your Honor, I'm representing Mr. Hollands. Logan Carrey, public defense."
His voice held its usual warmth wrapped inside professionalism, but there was something else beneath it too—a hard edge sharpened by urgency.
The judge gave him a brief nod, then returned his attention to me. The silence that followed felt immense, like the whole room held its breath waiting for him to decide what came next.
I lowered my eyes for a second. My pulse pushed against the inside of my wrists, trapped under cold steel. Every inhale felt too shallow, every exhale unsteady. I tried, instinctively, to reach inward for a second rhythm—the one that used to settle behind mine, guiding my lungs when fear tightened them.
But there was nothing.
Only my own breath, uncertain and uneven, in a room built to watch people break.
The judge lifted the next page, and the sound of it turning felt louder than my heartbeat.
The District Attorney rose, smoothing his tie with a gesture that looked practiced—ritualistic, almost—before stepping into the well of the courtroom. His shoes struck the floor with a steady rhythm, sharp enough to echo off the wood panels. He glanced at me once, brief and assessing, then addressed the judge with a certainty that pressed against my ribs.
"Your Honor, the state moves to remand the defendant pending trial," he said. His voice carried a clipped precision, each syllable aligned like a series of locked doors.
He listed the reasons one by one, stacking them neatly, efficiently.
"The charges are severe. We have arson resulting in loss of life. A second victim who survived. A coordinated attempt to flee responsibility. And there is clear evidence of involvement with forces that fall under the Sovereign Integrity Act."
Forces. That meant Corvian, though no one dared say the name.
"He presents a risk of evasion," the DA continued. "The kind of risk not mitigated by conventional monitoring. The state believes release would jeopardize the integrity of the investigation and the safety of the public."
I felt Logan tense beside me—a small shift, but enough to steady my own trembling spine for a moment.
The judge nodded once, slowly, in that unreadable way people with power do when they're deciding someone else's future.
"Mr. Carrey?" he said.
Logan stepped forward. The legs of the table caught his blazer briefly, but he moved past it with firm purpose. His voice, when it came, carried the strained warmth of a man trying to shelter someone standing in the open rain.
"Your Honor," he began, "my client has no prior record, no history of violence, and no pattern of fleeing. His life is rooted in this city. He cooperated with the investigation to the best of his ability under extraordinary distress."
I lowered my eyes, watching the cuffs shift when I breathed. The courtroom felt colder than the hallway. Something in the air had the sharpness of stone soaked in winter.
"He is twenty-five," Logan continued, "and he came in voluntarily once officers told him he was needed. He's not a threat. He's not an escape risk. He's a confused young man who deserves the chance to assist in his own defense."
The DA gave a small, disdainful huff, but Logan didn't look at him. He kept his eyes on the judge, a subtle plea held steady in the set of his jaw.
"At minimum," Logan said, "we ask for supervised release, or a financial bond proportionate to his means. House restrictions can be arranged. Curfews. Check-ins. Anything to ensure compliance. But detention is unnecessary."
The judge folded his hands. Silence spread across the room, dense and heavy, like the pause before a verdict even though this wasn't one.
For a heartbeat, I thought he might listen.
Then he spoke.
"Given the severity of the charges," the judge said, "and the involvement of prohibited forces under the Sovereign Integrity Act, the court finds the defendant presents a risk that cannot be adequately managed through conditional release."
Something inside me tightened enough to ache. My throat felt scraped raw, though I hadn't spoken.
"Bail is denied."
The words didn't fall; they settled—wet cement around my ankles.
"Mr. Hollands," the judge added, almost as an afterthought, "you are remanded to custody pending trial. Plea will be entered as not guilty; case set for preliminary hearing on December 5th, 2025."
Logan whispered my name, barely audible, as if trying to keep me tethered to the floor beneath us. I nodded without meaning to, my vision blurring at the edges—not from tears, but from the realization that the day was folding in on itself again, collapsing into another stretch of walls and locks and hands guiding me where I didn't want to go.
Two officers approached from behind. The courtroom seemed to dim as they reached for me, their shadows crossing my hands, their breath stirring the air near my shoulders.
I tried instinctively to reach inward, to feel him, to sense even a thread of the connection that once lived beneath my ribs.
Nothing answered.
I stood there, wrists bound, the judge's words replaying in my skull like a slow, unbroken toll of a bell.
Remanded to custody.No bail.Pending trial.
My knees tightened to keep me from swaying. Logan said something—my name, again, softer this time—but the officers were already moving, guiding me toward the side door that led downstairs.
The courtroom doors closed behind us, sealing the space with a finality that felt like the beginning of another kind of cell.
The cells beneath the courthouse were colder than the ones at the station. The air felt denser, as if it had been held too long in too many lungs, and the floor carried a chill that climbed up through the soles of my shoes. The officers guided me down a narrow hallway lined with iron doors, each one carrying a small slot for observation. The echo of our footsteps followed behind us like another presence.
I was placed inside a holding cell—a square room built from stone that seemed older than the courthouse above it. The walls had the color of old parchment, stained in places by time or hands or both. A bench fixed to the ground waited along one side, its surface hard enough that sitting on it felt like bracing myself against the cold spine of the building.
The door closed behind me.
Silence filled the space almost instantly. Time here didn't tick; it hovered, a fly that refused the window. A quiet that had pressure, the kind that reminded me I wasn't supposed to speak here, or breathe too deeply, or move at all until they called my name again. My thoughts pressed in from every direction, overlapping until they formed a kind of murmur that ran along my nerves.
I couldn't tell if I was scared or exhausted. Everything inside me felt half-asleep, half-burning.
After what felt like an hour—maybe more—the door opened again. Another officer stood there, holding a clipboard.
"Time to move," he said.
I followed him out, the cuffs cold around my wrists again. They led me through corridors with walls painted in colors meant to soothe, though nothing about the shades did. A transport van waited outside, different from the earlier one. This one had a deeper rumble, and the doors shut with a heavy finality that made the air inside tighten.
We drove for a long while. I watched the city pass through the reinforced window, but the view was blocked enough that everything looked like nothing—a smear of sky, buildings, figures moving without faces. I felt like something being erased.
When the van finally slowed, my body drew itself inward without my permission. The building they brought me to stood wide and low, the kind of structure built for permanence rather than beauty. There were no windows in the immediate hall they ushered me through, only doors, each one leading somewhere I didn't understand yet.
Inside, the air carried the scent of disinfectant and old concrete. I could hear movement deeper in the facility—voices calling numbers, the clatter of carts, the dull thud of doors shutting two corridors away. Every sound felt muted by distance, as if this place knew how to swallow noise before it could fully form.
They led me to an intake room.
A guard behind a tall desk glanced at me briefly, then flipped through a stack of forms.
"Strip," he said without looking up. I faced the painted cinderblock while he listed instructions in a tired voice I tried not to make human.
The word cut through me in a way the cuffs hadn't. My hands hesitated at the buttons of my shirt. Cold air met my skin as I removed each layer. My clothes were gathered in a plastic bag and sealed with a sharp press of the guard's palm.
A prison uniform was handed to me—a dull blue set, the fabric stiff, the shirt marked with an identification number that didn't feel like it belonged to a person. It felt like an expiration date. The pants hung awkwardly, a size too big, cinched with a woven band that scratched at my waist.
The guard watched me dress with the same attention someone might give a malfunctioning appliance.
Another officer set items on the counter: a folded blanket, sheets, a toothbrush wrapped in thin plastic, a small bar of soap that smelled more of chemicals than anything clean. The blanket had a roughness to it that reminded me of places I used to sleep on the street—those nights under eaves and makeshift roofs where the cold didn't bother asking permission.
"Cell assignment: B-Block, upper tier, room seventeen," the officer said.
He wrote something on a chart, then stamped a document with a sound that cut through the air like the beat of a gavel.
"You're now logged in as pre-trial," he added. "On remand. Pending disposition."
The words drifted around me, slow and muffled, as though they were passing through water before reaching my ears. I nodded, not because I understood but because the alternative was breaking down right there in front of them.
A guard took my elbow—not harshly, not gently either—and guided me down another hall. The scent changed as we walked. I caught traces of food from somewhere behind the doors, the distant smell of sweat, bleach, bodies stacked into routine.
The guard didn't take me to the cell right away. Instead, he turned me toward a narrow corridor marked Medical Assessment, the words stenciled on a door that swung inward with a tired squeak. A sign below it read SUICIDE PREVENTION PROTOCOL in flaking vinyl—letters that had seen too many nights. The room inside was small, almost cramped, painted in a color meant to calm but failing miserably. A cot sat pushed against one wall. A desk crowded with forms filled the other.
A nurse—middle-aged, eyes dull with repetition—looked up only long enough to register I existed.
"Sit," she said.
I obeyed. The paper covering the cot crackled under me, the sound brittle, almost punitive. She wrapped a band around my arm and started pumping a cuff, the pressure tightening until my fingertips tingled.
"Blood pressure's high," she murmured, not surprised. "Pulse elevated."
Her fingers moved with efficient detachment, touching me just enough to complete the tasks but never lingering long enough to resemble empathy.
She didn't look at my face when she spoke.
"Any medications?"
"No."
"Drugs? Alcohol?"
"No."
"Self-harm history?"
I swallowed. "No."
She watched my hands shake and checked a box that said STABLE.
"Any injuries we should know about?"
Just my life unraveling. Just my lungs refusing to work. Just my soul feeling strangled inside my chest.
"No," I whispered.
She nodded, already halfway through the next form. She wasn't trying to heal me. She was determining whether I would complicate her shift.
She circled not at risk without ceremony.
"Alright. Standard wing," she said to the officer behind me. "He's good to go."
Good. As if any part of me resembled that word.
Before I could stand, she slid a clipboard toward me. "Phone numbers. Anyone you want added to your call list. Write them down."
My fingers tightened around the pen. I wrote Poppy's number first. My handwriting wavered, the pen dragging unevenly across the paper. Then Logan's office number. I stared at the last empty line, wondering if there was anyone else. There wasn't. I handed the clipboard back.
"They'll be approved when they're approved," she said. "Might be tomorrow. Might be next week."
My throat tightened, but I nodded. Hope hates timelines that vague.
Another guard stepped forward, a man who looked like he had long since stopped taking anything personally.
"Alright," he said, "here's what you can keep in your cell—one book, legal papers, hygiene stuff we give you, maybe a pen if you don't get creative with it. Commissary comes later, if you earn credit."
The words fell around me like stones dropped one by one into a deep well.
"Meals are in the wing," he continued. "Breakfast early. Dinner early. Don't complain. Exercise yard runs on rotation; you'll hear the announcement. Roll call three times a day. Lights-out is at twenty-two-hundred but we keep the landings lit through the night."
He pointed at a small red button painted on the wall near the medical desk.
"That's the emergency call. Use it if you're dying. Not for boredom."
I nodded again, though my brain felt waterlogged—everything drifting in slow motion, as if each sentence took too long to reach me.
He grunted. "You got it?"
"Yeah," I said, though the word felt thin and unsteady. I remembered maybe ten percent of what he said. Maybe less.
"Good enough."
They led me back out into the main corridor. I carried a plastic bag filled with my issued items and the rough bundle of bedding they'd handed me, my arms aching under the awkward weight.
The guard walked ahead, boots clicking softly on the linoleum floor as he guided me toward the wing. The air shifted gradually—the scent of disinfectant giving way to the heavier smell of crowding, bodies, shared space. Voices echoed from somewhere far off, layered into a low murmur that kept rising and falling without meaning.
At the end of the hallway, the door to the wing opened on its own weight. We stepped into a space that felt impossibly long. Two tiers of cells lined the walls, each one marked by numbers painted neatly beneath the bars. The ceiling lights were harsh, washing everything in a cold glow that made no shadows deep enough to hide in.
The guard started walking along the upper landing. My footsteps trailed behind him, slightly uneven, the bag bumping against my leg each time I tried to match his pace. My wrists still carried the feeling of the cuffs, even though they'd been removed.
Below us, someone shouted a name. Another voice laughed. A metal tray clattered against the floor. It all blended into a single sound I couldn't separate, like the hallway itself was breathing.
The guard glanced back once. "Almost there," he said.
My chest tightened. I tried—instinctively, foolishly—to reach for that rhythm again. The one that wasn't mine. That second presence I'd relied on without admitting it. I tried to find even the smallest hint of him near my pulse.
Nothing answered.
Only the sound of keys jingling at the guard's hip. Only the shuffling of other inmates watching from their cells. Only the heavy, growing awareness that no one was coming for me. Not now.
Not yet.
We kept walking, the landing stretching out like a narrowing bridge.
I followed because I didn't know what else to do. Because everything behind me and ahead of me felt equally impossible. Because I had become something the court remanded, something the prison processed, something this wing would swallow without blinking.
And because the guard kept moving forward, and my body—numb, exhausted, frightened—chose to follow.
The guard stopped in front of a cell, tapped the number on the plate, and unlocked the door.
"Inside."
The cell waited, silent and square. A bunk built into the wall. A small stainless sink below a shelf. A toilet in the open. Another blanket folded at the foot of the bed. Everything arranged like a list of rules.
My body didn't fight. It moved on its own, stepping into the space that was now mine. The door slid shut behind me with a deep, controlled thud, more final than the one at the courthouse.
I set the bedding down on the mattress. The sheets felt thin between my fingers. My arms didn't seem fully connected to me anymore; every movement felt delayed, as though I were watching myself from somewhere a little to the left of my own body.
Numbness wasn't exactly safety. It was more like standing between emotions that wouldn't let me choose which one to drown in first.
Fear pressed against the inside of my ribs. Shame rested somewhere near my throat. A strange quietness drifted through my mind, the kind that came right before panic but didn't fully settle into it.
I sat on the edge of the bunk.
The mattress gave only slightly, and the springs creaked under my weight.
I tried to breathe, the way I used to when I wanted to feel him. To touch the rhythm that wasn't mine. To find that second presence that lived just beneath my heartbeat.
But the cell felt too still. The air too thin.
There was only me. My breath, uneven. My pulse, trapped under my skin. My body inside a room too small to hold everything I was trying not to feel.
And somewhere, I told myself, Corvian must know.
He had to. He always knew.
But as the minutes passed, the walls didn't shift. There was no change in the air. No sign. No whisper.
Just the quiet of a place meant to keep the living contained.
The silence didn't last long.
From the cell beside mine, a voice drifted through the bars—low, nasal, coated with the kind of boredom that turned into cruelty when given enough hours and not enough space.
"Pretty boy," he called. "Hey. Pretty boy. You even a man?"
I froze.
My back pressed against the wall. My knees pulled in before I realized I'd moved, as if my body craved the smallest shape possible. My breath thinned out, quiet and uneven. The man chuckled—a slow sound, the kind that prowled.
"Come on, sweetheart. Say something."
I didn't. I kept my head down, my forehead touching my arm, trying to feel small enough to disappear into the corner. The room felt suddenly too bright, too exposed. The mattress beneath me seemed to tilt. My pulse scattered, hitting the inside of my chest in a pattern I didn't recognize.
I shut my eyes and wished for that familiar rhythm—his rhythm—but there was nothing. Nothing at all.
The voice next door laughed again. "Shy. Shy's cute. You gonna be like that all week?" His knuckles tapped his own bars—one, two, three—as if setting tempo.
Before I could draw breath, the corridor filled with the heavy thump of boots. The sound grew louder, then stopped directly outside my cell. Keys rattled. The lock slid.
The door swung inward.
A man stood framed in its opening—tall, shoulders stretched broad beneath the rough fabric of his prison uniform. He had a deep scar carved across his face, pulling at the corner of his mouth. His eyes were a strange shade—pale, sharp, unreadable—and the expression he wore was something quiet and volatile at the same time, like suppressed weather.
His hair was cut close, uneven in places, as though he'd done it himself or someone impatient had done it for him. Tattoos climbed his neck—not colorful, just dark strokes shaped like claws or branches. On the outside, he might have fit into any night street I'd once wandered through, but the way he held himself here was unmistakably prison-born.
An officer hovered beside him, hand resting on the baton at his belt.
The scarred man tilted his head toward the wall separating my cell from the next.
"The guy over there's talkin' to you," he said, voice rough, scraped with disdain. "Already being disrespectful on your first hour, bitch?"
The inmate next door laughed again, louder now. "You're one lucky motherfucker, Tuck."
"Tucker," the officer snapped toward the other cell, "enough." Then, to mine: "House rule—no dialogue across bars."
He didn't wait for a reply. He shoved Tucker inside and slammed the door behind him. The lock clicked home with a brutal finality that dropped straight into my stomach. The viewing slot snapped shut. We were edited out.
For a moment, only the sound of Tucker's breathing filled the space.
He took a step forward.
I pressed tighter to the wall, my knees drawn in so close it hurt. My hands shook without permission. My eyes stung, not with tears, but with shock pounding too quickly through me.
Tucker stopped halfway between the door and the bunk, studying me the way someone might study an animal that didn't know where to run.
"Why do you look so frightened?" he asked.
His tone wasn't mocking. It wasn't gentle either. It was something in between—something assessing, almost curious, layered in a roughness that came from too many years spent watching people break.
"First time?"
His question lodged itself somewhere behind my ribs. I couldn't answer.
My tongue felt stuck to the roof of my mouth. The cell felt smaller than it had a moment ago, the air heavier. I kept staring at him, my eyes too wide to hide anything. A fresh wave of panic rose in my chest, sharp enough to steal my breath.
I hadn't expected a cellmate. I hadn't expected a voice from next door calling me things I thought I'd left behind years ago. I hadn't expected any of this.
And Tucker—towering, scarred, eyes bright as embers under the dim lights—stood there waiting for an answer I didn't have.
But no matter how frightened I felt, no matter how fast my pulse climbed, there was one truth I couldn't ignore:
I was alone in this cell.
Alone, and human.
And Corvian was nowhere.
Tucker watched me for a long moment, his head tilted slightly, that scar pulling at the edge of his mouth every time he shifted his jaw. The silence stretched between us, thick enough to bend the air.
"I don't like quiet people," he said.
His voice carried a strange calm, the kind that didn't need to raise itself to feel dangerous. He took a step closer, then another. My heartbeat climbed so fast it felt like it might claw its way out of my chest.
"What's your name?"
I stayed pressed against the wall, breath held, head lowered. I couldn't speak. Couldn't move. My throat felt sealed shut, as if any sound I made would crack something open inside me that I wasn't sure I could survive.
Tucker waited. His eyes narrowed, not hostile—just patient, like he was testing the limits of something. When I didn't answer, the shift happened fast.
One second he was standing in the middle of the cell.
The next, he was on me.
His weight slammed into my chest, not crushing but enough to force the air out of me in a sharp gasp. My back struck the floor, the impact trembling through my spine. His hand pinned my shoulder; his palm set to my cheekbone, turning my face to look at him.
He leaned over me, his breath steady, not labored at all from the movement.
He smiled—not wide, not cruel. Just a slow tilt of the mouth, shaped by someone who got used to getting answers this way.
"I asked your name." The scar tugged when he spoke, making the word name look like it hurt to say.
My pulse pounded so loudly I could barely hear him. The ceiling above him blurred, the lights casting uneven shadows across the scar that split through his eyebrow. His eyes were close now—too close—watching me the way someone watches a trembling animal, deciding if it will bolt or break.
My hands curled against the floor. My breath came in short, shaking bursts. I tried to speak, but my voice stuck somewhere in my throat, tangled in fear and the weight of his body over mine.
Tucker's grip didn't tighten.
He didn't strike me.
He didn't raise his voice.
He just stayed there, pinning me with the ease of someone who'd done this exact motion hundreds of times, his expression unreadable except for the faint amusement lingering in his eyes.
"Come on," he murmured, almost gentle beneath the gravel in his voice. "Name. Now."
"COs think I keep people calm," he added, a private joke I didn't understand.
But I still couldn't speak.
My name sat somewhere in my chest like a stone I couldn't lift.
And Tucker kept watching me, his face inches from mine, waiting for the smallest sound to prove I hadn't vanished entirely.